


Nice Guys Finish Last

by RisemboolRanger



Category: Land of the Dead (2005)
Genre: Action, Apocalypse, F/M, Horror, Violence, Walkers, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:51:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2050758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisemboolRanger/pseuds/RisemboolRanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living with politics, Terri has been taught that being nice doesn't get you anywhere. After discovering she has the key to getting a fireball assassin on her side she strikes up a hefty bargain. Because a not-so-nice guy is exactly what she needs to help her survive a zombie apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nice Guys Finish Last

The smell hit her before anything else. The mustiness of mould and damp earth, overlaying something more putrid, something more... dead, for lack of a better word. One was close. The question was, how close?

A telling scuff behind her told her that the answer was too close. They had no grace, these things, no sense of fluid movement. They moved along at a pace that couldn't be described as anything more than a shuffle. Yet the bastards still somehow found ways to sneak up on you.

In one flowing movement, Terri raised the baseball bat in her hands and pivoted on the spot, swinging with all her might as she turned. For one brief moment, she had a glimpse of lank hair and a greying, rotting face filled with stained yellow teeth converging on her before red exploded across her vision.

It staggered slightly, but still kept coming. One hit was never enough, no matter how hard you swung. Terri repositioned her feet and struck out again. More blood and matter sprayed her front. It went down on the next hit, enough of the head having been destroyed. Three blows. She was getting better at this.

It had started off much easier to kill the rest of these walkers than the first ones she'd had to stop. The images of those two had been etched in her mind for weeks, making all the others seem like nothing in comparison. Now, the images had faded. She'd been separate from everything for so long that she couldn't remember so well anymore. The faces of all the kills just blurred together now. In the end, none of them mattered. They all met the same fate at the end of a baseball bat.

Terri shouldered the bat with one hand and used the other to wipe away the worst of the goo from her face, her chest, her hair... She needed to find a water source soon. Right now, she was a walking scent beacon. But she still had no idea where exactly she was.

A few hours back, she'd had the horrible idea that she was actually going in circles. It would certainly explain why she hadn't come across a city or even a town for several days now. But with it still not becoming daylight for quite a while yet, she had no way of telling. No choice but to keep heading in the direction that she hoped was straight on.

As soon as she felt the first signs of fatigue start to show, she knew she had to stop. It was like those big signs you'd see alongside the freeway. ' _Tiredness can kill. Take a break._ ' Travelling alone amongst a world of walkers required just as much alertness as driving. Even more so. One little slip due to slower reactions could very well cost Terri her life.

She stopped walking as soon as she came to a small cluster of trees that she reckoned she could climb. She couldn't remember the last time she'd come across a town - trees were the only things stretching up from the landscape around here, not buildings. She'd left the highway quite a while ago.

Terri awkwardly tucked the baseball bat into the tight waistband of her tartan jeans as securely as she could and began her climb. The trees weren't as easy to scale as she would have liked, but that was the idea behind her choice. If it was a difficult climb for her, then it would be even more difficult, and hopefully impossible, for something that didn't have the ability to think.

Once she was up high enough to feel safe, she carefully manoeuvred herself so that she could remove the rucksack she'd been wearing and slip it over a branch higher up still. Secure, but out of her way. When Terri had been forced to flee her family home in Pittsburgh, she hadn't had the chance to grab anything besides her brother's old baseball bat. The clothes on her back, the junk in her pockets and the makeshift weapon were all she'd escaped with.

The rucksack was something she'd acquired later on from another escapee like herself, though one who'd been wounded beyond help. To say he'd been bitten would have been an understatement. He'd been half eaten. Bleeding profusely from deep wounds at his collarbone, abdomen and both arms, Terri had found him crawling alongside an abandoned road. He couldn't have had more than hours left to live... or turn.

When he'd seen her, he'd begged her to get him to a hospital, a doctor, any kind of help. Instead, Terri had killed him when his head had been turned to put him out of his misery, bludgeoning him to pulp like she'd already had to do more times than she would have liked. She didn't even know where she was; let alone the location of the nearest hospital. And with her dead cell phone, she had no way of contacting anybody. This had been the kindest outcome for the lone traveller.

Plus the man's demise had benefitted Terri more than he'd ever know. She'd taken his rucksack for good measure and discovered that the man must have been some kind of backpacker. Though clearly not prepared for a world as far gone as this, he'd at least been prepared for a long stint as a nomad travelling through the countryside.

Terri had lightened the load by casting aside anything she could spare. She kept nothing but the ample supply of water and dried food packets, a pocket knife, a burnt out flashlight and what she could condone carrying from the medical kit. She retained the painkillers, antibiotics and bandages and ditched the splints and ankle supports. If she was unlucky enough to injure herself so that she needed either, then she'd have no chance of survival anyway. The ability to move freely was her best advantage right now.

She positioned herself with her back to the tree trunk and wedged her feet against a thicket of branches, securing herself until she was sure that she wouldn't fall. She laid the baseball bat across her lap, both hands resting on top of it, and closed her eyes. Maybe just once, she'd dream about how things were, how her life had been before this apocalypse of horror...

Terri woke up a few hours later as abruptly as if somebody had just shouted in her ear. It was actually due to her sense of self-preservation. Clutching the baseball bat so that she wouldn't drop it, she turned carefully to look down. Three walkers were gathered around the base of the tree. Too stupid to understand how to climb, they clawed at the trunk in desperation of not knowing how to reach their food. Great.

It wasn't the first time Terri had woken to a sight like this, but just once, she'd like to have a nicer wake-up call. She pulled the rucksack down from the branch above her and slung it over her shoulder before climbing a way further down, the baseball bat tucked safely under one arm.

Once she was low enough to jump without hurting herself, she flung the rucksack away from the tree as hard as she could in an attempt to distract the walkers. It worked. They all turned to look as the rucksack made a loud flump as it hit the ground further away. With their attention elsewhere, Terri gripped the baseball bat in one hand and leapt down, landing straight on top of the biggest walker.

The impact took them both to the ground. But of course, Terri had the advantage of quick thinking and was on her feet again in one movement, kicking the walker's head hard as she jumped off of him, in the hopes of him staying down just those few seconds more. Another was already advancing on her. She hit him around the side of the head with the baseball bat, knocking him away to give her a feet extra feet of space.

She then turned towards a smaller, female one that had approached from behind, moving in between Terri and the tree. Terri swung the bat as hard as she could, crushing the walker's head between it and the tree. The impact caused its head to crack gruesomely along one side, making it look as easy as if she'd ripped open a seam in some old clothing.

Terri twisted again to see that the other two were advancing from the other side. She pivoted and used all of her strength to kick the one closest in the abdomen, knocking him backwards into the second and giving her more space again. She then turned back to where the female had recovered, but still hadn't moved yet and swung again, slamming her head against the trunk once more. This time, blood splattered up against the tree and the walker went down for good.

The other two were going to be harder. There wasn't enough room between them to take care of one without the other getting in the way or getting to her first. Terri tried a different tactic, shoving the baseball bat into her waistband again and scrambling back up into the tree. With the small time frame she had, she was only able to make it to the lowest branches, but that was all she needed.

She hung onto one of the studier branches and swung her legs back and forth, attempting to kick the walkers in the head. One tried grasping at her leg with clammy, rotting fingers, so she kicked him hard in the face with the heel of her shoe. There was a satisfying crunch and a gush of cold blood as her foot connected, breaking the walker's nose. They didn't seem to be able to feel pain, but good hits at least made them stagger.

She tried to do the same to the bigger walker, but it didn't seem to have the same effect. She kicked out at him several times, but on the third kick, the baseball bat dislodged and fell before she could even try to save it. _Shit_.

Terri tightened her grip and swung herself back again. The first walker had closed the gap again and her feet connected with him a second time. This time, she tried using him as a ground to push herself forward with more force. As she swung, she stretched both her feet out, driving them into the face of the bigger walker.

It still didn't do any damage, but it had at least knocked both of them further back, giving her breathing room again. She dropped down between them on all fours like a cat, hastily retrieving the bat in the same movement. Walkers didn't seem to have the brain functions to pick things up, but the last thing you wanted was for them to get between you and your weapon. That had been close. Maybe next time she wouldn't try and be quite so creative.

She straightened up and lashed out with the baseball bat at the smaller walker. The other was definitely the bigger threat, but he'd be easier to take out if she didn't have to concentrate on keeping this one at bay too. Easiest first. She stood her ground between the two of them, stopping to turn around every now and then to clobber the bigger walker around the head to force him back, but still mostly focusing her energy on the first one.

It keeled over with its skull shattered after four blows, blood soaking Terri's shoes where it fell. Her old Converse had served her well over the years, but they'd certainly seen better days. Of course, shoes were the last thing on her mind right now. She jumped over the newly fallen body and turned to face her final opponent.

The last walker staggered towards her, stumbling as its feet caught on its fallen comrade. It didn't have the thought process to try and step over or around it. Just like Terri had hoped. As the walker swayed and bowed its head forward to her level, she raised the bat above her head with both arms and then brought it crashing down onto his skull with all her might.

There was still some life force left in it - or whatever it was that reanimated these fallen corpses - but the power behind Terri's drive naturally brought the walker to its knees. Up close, she could see a little more of what his face must have looked like before he'd turned, the almost buzz cut hair before it had grown over with mould and dried blood. He'd probably been a bodyguard or some kind of security in his lifetime. In the end, it hadn't helped him.

Terri sometimes saw walkers as who they had been if she got a good look at them. Having an idea of what they'd been like as a living, breathing human should probably have made it more difficult to kill them... But it didn't. Something about them trying to take a bite out of her didn't make her feel quite so remorseful.

Taking the advantage of the walker being at her height, she swung again and again, not giving it time to even raise its head. It finally fell still with the sixth hit. The big ones were always harder to take down. Bloody brain matter oozed from the deep craters in its head.

"Whoever said that three against one was bad odds?" Terri muttered to herself.

She stepped back and wiped the baseball bat clean on a patch of grass that hadn't suffered the fate of any gross walker fluids. Three more down. Part of her kind of wished that she'd kept count of how many walkers she'd taken out. Another part of her didn't care to know. It was probably better for her sanity that way. It was already a struggle at times to hold onto it.

The whole fight had only lasted several minutes, but it felt more like hours. Her nap felt almost pointless now. All the action had sapped a huge chunk of her energy and her arms and hands ached from swinging the bat around so much. But if there was one thing she was now, it was awake. And alert.

She decided to keep moving. She didn't feel this area was so safe anymore. There were probably more walkers where these three had come from. If she tried taking a nap here, there was a chance that she'd wake up to the same thing all over. She really didn't need a vicious circle right now. She could rest up again later if she needed to. Preferably elsewhere.

She also knew she was better to keep going whilst she could. Her food supply wasn't quite as ample anymore. Unless she found another city, then she probably only had enough for a few more weeks. She could ration, but not too much. If she didn't make sure she ate enough, then she wouldn't have enough energy to fight. And then she'd be dead anyway.

Keep moving. That was the key. Whereas any town or city would do right now, the bigger goal was to get to Detroit. Her only family left were in Detroit. They were still alive - they had to be. Terri had been telling herself that over and over. Even though she kept suffering the same horrible fear that she was the only one left at all. That she was completely alone in this horrible, dying new world.

Yet, as she kept walking, she soon heard a sound that finally gave her the glimmer of hope she'd been sorely needing. It was the sound of a car engine in the distance. No... It sounded like something bigger than a car. Maybe a truck. She couldn't tell how far it was, but from the slowly quietening sound, she knew it was moving further away. She wasn't stupid enough to try chasing it on foot. But it didn't matter. It had given her what she needed - the first confirmation of other life in over a week.

Feeling considerably more upbeat, Terri continued in the direction that she'd heard the engine, in hopes of it leading her towards a town or city. She still had a few hours of darkness left, so maybe if she was close to somewhere, she'd actually be able to see city lights.

Keeping the thought at the front of her mind as motivation, she plodded on. She hadn't come across anymore walkers since her rather rude wake-up call and for that she was grateful. Now that she felt she might actually be close to something, she didn't want to stop. She didn't want anything to get in her way. She just wanted to keep going.

But of course, it was never that easy. After a little while, she started to hear more noises around her. But these weren't the sounds of a nearby city; they were the familiar sounds of walkers. She was sure of it. She'd followed a dirt track for a while, but now she was moving amongst trees and bushes again. Plenty of cover to keep walkers hidden from her view.

Terri chose the most open trail she could see and kept moving, the baseball bat held tightly in both hands, slowing her pace only slightly as she slipped into full alert mode. She rounded a thicket of bushes and found a lone walker with his back to her, staggering along in a drunken zigzag. She could probably have gotten past without it even noticing her, but she was more concerned that just leaving a walker to its own devices without killing it would come back to bite her on the ass later. Maybe even literally.

She crept up behind the walker, taking care to step as quietly as possible, and took a sudden swing at it. The awkwardly aimed blow broke the walker's neck, leaving its head drooping at an odd angle. A broken neck didn't stop it from being hungry though. It turned to face Terri, groaning between cracked lips and mismatched teeth. She wasted no time in hitting it twice more, obliterating the head in seconds.

She'd tried to bring as little attention to herself as she could, but apparently, that was impossible. She could hear more footsteps against the grass, so she quickly took cover by edging back round the cluster of bushes, trying to gage where the sounds were coming from.

She suddenly heard an audible click directly behind her. Without hesitating, she spun on her heel, putting all of the momentum from the twist into the swing of the bat. There was a clatter as the bat met a pair of hands, the impact knocking a gun out of their grip and sending it disappearing into the bushes. Wait... A _gun_? Walkers definitely didn't carry guns.

Terri lowered the bat just an inch and looked up into eyes that were just as surprised as her own. Eyes that were very much alive. This wasn't a walker at all. This man wasn't dead and rotting. He was living and breathing and completely _human_.

Without quite knowing what else to say, she blurted out, "You're alive."

"No shit," he replied through clenched teeth, clutching his hand.

"Sorry," Terri apologised guiltily, having gotten too used to walkers not being able to feel pain. "I thought you were one of them."

He ignored her. "I think you broke one of my fingers."

"Sorry, but you snuck up behind me," Terri protested. "What did you expect me to do?"

"Yeah, well, I thought you were one of them too," he replied, flexing his fingers. One of them now sat an awkward angle. "It's not my shooting hand at least; be grateful for that. What are you doing out here? You get lost or something?"

"I came from Pittsburgh," Terri explained. "I'm just looking for a city right now, but I don't know where I am."

"Err, lady, you're about a mile outside of Pittsburgh."

"What?" Terri exclaimed. "But that can't be possible; I left Pittsburgh about two weeks ago!"

"Then you need a better map. Trust me, I just got the fuck out of Pittsburgh. It's right over that way."

Terri stared in the direction he was pointing. She couldn't believe it. She knew that she'd gotten a little turned around after she'd managed to find Cleveland and she knew she'd felt like she'd been going in circles for the last day or so, but she'd had no idea she'd been heading back towards the place she'd been trying to get away from in the first place. What absolutely shitty luck.

"Well, that's just fucking perfect!" she suddenly shouted in frustration, swinging the baseball bat at the thicket of bushes and sending leaves and twigs cascading everywhere. "Two weeks and I'm right back to where I goddamn started!"

"Hey, just shut up a second!" the guy hissed at her.

Terri lowered the bat and turned to glare at him. Who was he to tell her to shut up? But then she realised that he was listening for something. "What is it?" she whispered.

"Stenches."

"Stenches?" Terri repeated. She'd not heard that one before, but she guessed the name was appropriate at least.

The guy ignored her again. "I need my gun. Did you see where it went?"

"Err..." Terri hesitated and pointed sheepishly towards the bushes. "I think it went in there somewhere?"

The guy glared at her furiously. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I'm sorry, alright? I already told you it was because you snuck up on me!" Terri argued, forgetting to keep her voice down. She knew straightaway that she'd made the wrong move. A walker - or stench, she guessed - suddenly staggered up behind the guy, practically appearing from nowhere out of the bushes. She didn't waste any time in thinking. " _Duck_!"

Luckily, the guy had quick enough reflexes and instantly dropped to the floor. Terri swung the bat hard across the space where his head had been only moments before. Her swing hit the stench instead, knocking it backwards a few steps. She quickly sidestepped around the guy on the floor and bludgeoned the stench twice more. It keeled over at her feet, soaking her already gross Converse even more.

Moaning sounds behind her told her that more walkers had approached behind her. She turned to find that the guy was trying to fight them off just with kicks and punches. It was brave, but foolish. Fists weren't hard enough to do any real damage to them. Any kind of blow would hold them back to some degree, but fighting at close quarters would only make it more likely for you to get bitten.

"Watch out!" Terri shouted.

The guy ducked out of the way and she struck out at one of the stenches he'd been grappling with. She then quickly pivoted to hit the other one. Another two had already approached the scene. With Terri being the only one armed, they were outnumbered. She'd just have to focus on driving them all back to keep them both from becoming breakfast.

It was difficult with somebody else being in the way, but she managed to create a wider circle of space to move in. Hopefully, that'd give her the room to make some cleaner shots and start picking the stenches off one by one. At least the guy was smart enough to listen whenever she told him to get out of the way.

She succeeded in taking one down without any mishaps, but as she drew the bat back to start on the next one in line, another stench moved up behind her with speed she'd never seen from any of them before. As it grabbed for her, she lost her grip slightly on the baseball bat and the stench knocked it out of her hands. Oh, shit...

She didn't have the time or room to pick it up again. She'd fallen prey to the critical rule of never letting a walker get in between you and your weapon. Just as Terri was sure that they were done for, the guy barrelled in and struck the stench in the side of the head with a well aimed punch. He hit it so hard that the stench staggered several feet. There was an audible crunch, which Terri had a horrible feeling was another of the guy's fingers, rather than damage to the walker.

She didn't have any time to waste on remorse. She dove for the baseball bat, using it to sweep the walker's feet out from underneath it by striking it on the back of the knee joints. As it went down, she alternated between using the bat and her foot to smash its head into the ground.

With only two walkers left, the odds were much more evenly stacked. One was a badly decaying female who had clearly been dead and walking for far too long. The other was a boy who couldn't have been any older than seventeen before he'd turned. They were both small of build and were both much easier to fell than the others.

By the time the massacre was over ,Terri found herself breathing much more heavily than usual. She hadn't taken on that many at once before. The energy from her earlier nap was definitely gone now. She looked over to the guy to see that he was cradling his hand again. It looked like she'd been right about the crunching sound she'd heard.

"You didn't break anything else, did you?" she asked in concern.

The guy shook his head. "Nah. Same finger. If it wasn't broken before, then it is now."

Terri opened her mouth to apologise, then realised there was something more important for her to say. "Thanks."

"Find my gun for me and maybe we'll call it even."

Terri had a feeling that he hadn't particularly enjoyed taking the minor part in the fight. Though she didn't really fancy crawling around through the bushes in the dark, she couldn't really argue with him after he'd saved her. She nodded and handed him the baseball bat. "You keep watch then. Do I get a name before I go crawling around on the ground for you?"

"Cholo."

"I'm Terri. But just for saving my ass, you can call me T.J.," she said lightly, using the nickname she'd always preferred anyway. She then got down onto her hands and knees and disappeared into the bushes.

The branches were thick and made it incredibly dark, but by feeling around extremely carefully, she managed to find the cool smoothness of the gun. As she picked it up, she heard shuffling sounds ahead on the other side of the bushes. Footsteps. Not _more_ walkers...

She quickly scrambled forwards towards the sounds in case Cholo hadn't heard them, the brambles catching her hair and digging into her scalp in her haste. She tore herself free and crawled out of the bushes to find herself looking straight up into the barrel of another gun. She instantly dropped the one she was carrying and raised her hands in front of her face, partly in surrender and partly out of instinctive protection.

"Wait, don't shoot!" she exclaimed hurriedly.

It felt like déjà vu as she saw surprise register in the man's face. Then Cholo came running round, having heard the commotion. "Wait, Fox, it's okay!"

"Shit. Sorry, I thought you were one of them," the guy apologised, lowering his gun.

"No worries; I thought the same," Terri dismissed. At least she hadn't caused an injury this time. She scrambled to her feet and passed the gun to Cholo. It didn't look like a normal gun; it weirdly looked more like a hot glue gun. She wondered what was inside it.

"So what are you doing out here?" asked the guy who Cholo had called Fox.

"I got a bit lost," Terri admitted.

"A bit? Apparently she's been wandering around outside of Pittsburgh for two weeks," Cholo laughed.

Terri chose to ignore him. "So where are you guys headed now? Back into Pittsburgh?"

"Nah. Me and Foxy here took Dead Reckoning when the big man wouldn't pay up for my services," explained Cholo. "Came out here to try and blow up the Green, but stenches did it for us."

"Wait, wait..." Terri backtracked, trying to process everything she'd just heard. "You tried to blow up Fiddler's Green?"

Cholo shrugged. "Didn't need to in the end. Last we saw, it looked like the place was going to hell anyway. Maybe I'm glad they wouldn't let me in. Otherwise I'd have ended up just like the rest of 'em."

"You wanted in?" Terri asked, surprised. He didn't really seem like the kind of guy to mix with most of the stuffy types who lived in Fiddler's Green. Well, _had_ lived.

"Yeah, why, what's it to you?"

"No reason," said Terri quickly, though her mind was suddenly racing with ideas as she tried to pull a plan together. "So what happened to Dead Reckoning? You wouldn't be wandering around out here if you still had it." Dead Reckoning was a heavily armoured truck that groups would occasionally take out, under permission from the higher-ups, as a protective mode of travelling when going into neighbouring towns to collect supplies.

"Ah, it got hijacked," said Cholo offhandedly. "Some self-righteous assholes thought they could put it to better use."

"Apparently, they left us a T-Bird and some weapons back down that way though, so that's where we're heading now," added Foxy, pointing in a direction to the right of where Terri had first come from.

Terri took it all in interestedly. "Where are you gonna head now then?"

"Gonna try our luck with an outpost in Cleveland," said Cholo, inspecting the barrel of his gun before sticking it into an impressive looking holster that was strapped to his leg. "And no; we don't take passengers."

"There's nothing in Cleveland," Terri pointed out. "I've been there - I found the outpost. It's completely dead."

"Wait, you were in Cleveland?" Foxy repeated.

Terri nodded. "Before I got turned around. That's where I've just come from."

"Shit," Cholo swore.

"Well, now what?" asked Foxy.

"I guess we could go back the other way and try for New Jersey..."

Terri hastily put two and two together in her head, based on what she'd heard. From the sounds of it, the two guys - Cholo especially - were mostly interested in money. She was guessing that the 'big man' Cholo had referred to was Paul Kaufman, the man who'd taken charge of Fiddler's Green. She didn't know what kind of 'services' Kaufman would have been paying him for - probably something illegal - but when Cholo hadn't received that payment, he'd been willing to blow up the Green for it.

Yeah, it definitely sounded like money was important to him. Money she could do. She'd learnt several times over already that it wasn't going to be easy to get to Detroit on her own. And that wasn't even including her clearly poor sense of direction. But right now, she'd been given the perfect opportunity to rustle up a couple of... tour guides, to put it one way.

"How about _past_ Cleveland instead?" she piped up. "If you guys take me where I need to go, I'll pay you for it."

Cholo pointedly looked her up and down. "With what money?"

Terri conceded that she didn't exactly look the picture of wealth right now with her torn and blood-soaked clothes. She pulled a rather battered but still working credit card out of the pocket of her jeans. "As long as I can find a working ATM machine, then I still have access to all my funds. I'll pay you whatever Kaufman was supposed to pay you. I'm guessing he's the guy you were out to get revenge on, right?"

Cholo raised his eyebrows. "Kaufman owed me over a hundred and eighty grand. You really think you can offer that kind of money?"

Terri fixed him with a steady gaze. So it had been something illegal then, to have amounted to that much. That was pretty much what she'd expected. It sounded like Cholo was the kind of guy most people would stay away from. Now Terri _knew_ she had to hire him. 

_Nice guys finish last_ , as she'd always been taught. She couldn't afford to finish last now. Someone who wasn't so nice was exactly what she needed to get her through an apocalyptic world of walkers.

"I lived in the Green. I can pay you whatever you want," she said confidently.

"What makes you so high-rise to be accepted into the Green?"

"You heard of Malcolm Russo?" Terri prompted.

"Yeah. He's the guy who was running for Mayor before everything changed," Foxy replied.

"Well, he's... was... my dad," explained Terry, having to correct herself mid-sentence. It sounded weird to her - it still hadn't quite sunk in yet. She hastily brushed away the feelings it threatened to trigger and pressed her point. "So are you in or what?"

"How far past Cleveland are we talking?" Cholo questioned.

"...Detroit?" said Terri hesitantly, knowing it was still somewhat of a long shot.

Foxy snorted. "No way. Even with a full tank of gas, a T-Bird wouldn't get you that far, not when you have to loop around Lake Erie. We don't know what's out that way. How do you know it's not so overrun with stenches that you can't get through on foot?"

"It's a chance I'm willing to take," Terri persisted stubbornly. "Besides, if we can find a boat to hijack, we can cut across Lake Erie and save on a huge chunk of time."

"No way, man." Foxy shook his head. "Cleveland was one thing, but Detroit's just crazy." He looked towards Cholo, who didn't say anything. "Bro, you're not actually considering it, are you?" 

"I dunno, man. It's not like I'm just going to come into money by going anywhere else," he replied, looking thoughtful. He turned his attention towards Terri. "Two hundred grand. _And_ the money for a lease on a nice apartment somewhere, away from all the stenches and shit."

"If you can actually find a place like that, then you've got it," Terri agreed happily, holding out her hand. 

Cholo eyed her warily before shaking her hand. "Fox. You really not coming?" 

"I think trying to get to Detroit's insane," said Foxy. "I'm out, bro."

"Foxy, you've been with me a long time, baby. I'm not gonna make you come with me," said Cholo. "Take the T-Bird and go find Riley. You'll be able to catch up to Dead Reckoning with a set of wheels."

Foxy clapped him gratefully on the shoulder. "No way will you get to Detroit on foot the whole way. Let me at least take you back into the city. If you can get past the stenches and grab your ride, then that'll give you a head start." 

Cholo returned the gesture. "It's a plan, baby." 

Terri raised her eyebrows. "So what ride are you promising, seeing as you're giving away the wheels you already have?" 

"How about a motorcycle?" 

Terri suddenly grinned. "In that case, you're forgiven." 

Finally, things were starting to look up. Maybe now she'd have a real chance of getting to Detroit after all. Breaking a finger, killing some walkers and bartering a few chips was all it had taken. Whoever said that playing nice would get you anywhere?


End file.
